Facts of Life
by ZombieKillerLevi
Summary: It's been some time since the defeat of Pitch Black, and there's been a good period of peace. Unfortunately, nothing ever lasts, and everything happens. While the children's belief isn't threatened, ties between allies are.
1. Chapter 1: Wanweird

**Disclaimer: I own nothing**

**-RotG-**

Jack Frost was flying. Now, this wasn't an unusual occurrence. Spirit of Winter and all that jazz. He was flying aimlessly, not really sure of where he was going next. Again, not that unusual. Jack had this tendency to go wherever the wind took him - quite literally. Sometimes he had a place he went to purposely, other times he just kinda showed up and went with whatever chaos he could cause.

In fact, nothing was really unusual about that day. If anything, it was typical. Jack was hoping to see one of his good friends, Jamie Bennett, after a long year. Hopefully, if the kid wasn't too caught up in his studies, he could enjoy a nice winter night, for old time's sake.

Jamie Bennett, like all humans, had grown in the past 12 years. He was in college, a big stuffy place that was worse than normal public school - for one, snow days didn't work as well there as they did in the lower grades. However, he never really grew up, still a child at heart, as cheesy as that sounds. And even though his roommate gave him hell for it, every winter he left the window open, in case Jack decided to stop by.

Jack couldn't help but smirk as he approached Jamie's college campus. Winter weather could be absolutely brutal, and yet Jamie saw fit to leave the window open. Then again, he probably would've given Jamie hell if he didn't. With a curt laugh, he dived straight for the window, swooping in gracefully. With him, he brought a sudden gust of wind, and he heard a curse and the sound of papers flying into the air.

"Dammit Jack!" The winter spirit grinned as Jamie turned to face him from his desk.

"How you've been, Jamie? Haven't seen you all year." Jack greeted, taking a seat on the bed.

"'S your own fault. It's not like I can just call you whenever." Jamie threw back, grinning. "But honestly...it's been brutal." He sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Semester exams are this week, and those are awesome." He deadpanned, looking out the window.

"Should I stir up a storm to postpone it?" Jack offered, gripping his staff. Jamie laughed.

"Nah, it's not worth the inconvenience - I think everyone would have to stay here for another week. And that means not going home for another week." He waved off.

"How's Sophie back there, anyways? She's what, 15 now?" Jack asked curiously.

"16 back in September." Jamie corrected. "Although you should probably visit her - she's telling me things are getting boring back home. Not enough snow days and not enough visits from the Guardian of Fun." He mentioned, smirking at Jack. The Guardian groaned.

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that. North's been trying to get me to be a bit more responsible and actually spreading winter rather than using it for no reason other than entertainment. Saying something about how adults are freaking out over 'global warming', whatever that is." He grumbled. Jamie let out a bark of laughter.

"You're serious? Global warming is because you won't spread winter to places?" Jamie asked incredulously. Jack sent a glare at his friend.

"It gets boring just freezing an already frozen continent. What, do you expect me to try and make it some sort of fancy ice palace or something?" Jack snarked.

"I was thinking more along the lines of an awesome place to sled. Like..." Jamie trailed off for a moment. "The ultimate sledding track thing." He tried to explain. Jack suddenly perked up.

"Speaking of which, wanna do some sledding?" He asked, jumping to his feet.

"Now?" Jamie asked, surprised. Jack scoffed.

"Don't tell me you're becoming a stuffy old adult." He teased, crossing his arms. Jamie looked back at the papers on his desk before sighing.

"I hate you Jack." He muttered, standing and grabbing his coat and boots. Jack just smirked, putting an arm around his first believer as he flew them out of the room.

**xxx**

It was rare to find a human and a winter spirit going at it in a race down a mountain. Especially if the human was heading into his adult years. However, it was still an interesting scene to watch.

"No fair, Jack!" Jamie shouted as Jack threw another blast of snow his way. Jamie swerved to dodge before skimming his gloved hand over the ground's surface to get some snow and mold it into an instrument of war. When Jack turned to Jamie again to attack, instead he got a facefull of snow.

"Oh, it's on!" Jack whooped, grinning. He lifted his staff and began to turn the sled path to ice, speeding it up a bit before leading the sled on into a loop-de-loop. Jamie yelped at the sudden change in gravity, though it turned to laughter in a heartbeat. Jack flew beside him, continuing to make the path of ice for Jamie. In a sudden change of pace, he turned the path into a ramp, and before Jamie could realize it, he flew off it and right into a huge pile of snow.

"Jack!" Jamie yelled, popping his head out of the snow and glaring at the cackling immortal.

"Hey, you started it!" Jack defended himself, leaning against his staff. Jamie opened his mouth to protest when suddenly, there was a huge rush of wind passing by and something flew right past them. Jack instinctively held out his staff, getting closer to Jamie.

"What was that?" Jamie asked, getting out of the snow. Jack looked deeper into the woods, taking a short glance at Jamie.

"I'm not sure..." He muttered, eyes searching the trees. Suddenly, Jamie gasped out, and Jack turned to see he was pointing towards town. Jack followed his gaze. Every single light had gone out, and a sort of eerie feel hung in the air, palpable even as far out in the woods as they were.

"I don't like this..." Jamie murmured, brushing the snow off his pants and standing at Jack's side. Jack looked to Jamie, and then to the town. "Think we should go check it out?" He asked.

"Think so." Jack muttered, grabbing Jamie under the armpits and lifting off. Jack flew high above town, watching it with interest and curiosity. The foreboding, eerie feeling was still there, and as they touched down, Jack suddenly felt like something was very, very wrong. The streets were silent, there was no sort of human activity. Even all the cars were off. Jack walked down the middle of the street, Jamie beside him.

"What the hell is going on?" Jamie muttered, looking around everywhere. The only light in town came from the moon, and Jamie had to swallow the lump that had formed in his neck. "It can't be Pitch, can it?" He asked Jack warily.

"Doubt it." Jack replied almost instantly. However, before they two could say anything else, they heard a faint scream from one of the houses. The Spirit of Winter grabbed Jamie again and the two flew like an arrow to the source. The house was a small, two-story one in a tiny neighborhood. Jack hovered by the windowsill, and inside they could see a little girl pushing the door, trying to keep it closed. Without a second thought, Jamie knocked on the window, and the little girl jumped, looking behind her fearfully.

"Help!" She screeched again, running to the window and throwing it open. The two climbed in.

"What's wrong?" Jamie asked the girl, who had a waterfall of tears running down her face.

"S-something's wrong with mommy!" She wailed, sniffing. "I had a bad dream and I went into mommy and daddy's room and I-" She started bawling, clutching Jamie's coat and crying into it. Jamie looked up to Jack.

"What's your name?" Jamie asked, putting his arms around her.

"L-Lindsay." She sniffled.

"Lindsay, when this happened, did you see all the lights in the town go out?" Jamie asked. Lindsay looked up to him and nodded.

"Mary said that when the lights go out and no one turned them off, it means demons are here.." She whimpered. "Is that true?" She asked, looking up at him with big eyes. However, the doorknob suddenly jigged, and all three people tensed.

"Lindsay, honey, what have I told you about locking the door?" A woman from the other side asked. Jamie pulled Lindsay behind him and put his ear to the door. Lindsay, however, squeaked.

"Don't open it!" She yipped, pulling Jamie away. The jiggling intensified.

"Honey? Who are you talking to in there? Come out, I need to talk to you about your father." Jamie looked to where Jack was.

"Jack...freeze the door shut." He said, backing away slowly. Jack touched the door with his staff and frost spread, eventually making that whole area of wall a big block of ice. However, the woman on the other side began changing her tactic.

"Lindsay, open the door." Jamie could feel a chill at the change in the woman's tone of voice. There was a loud bang at the door. "Lindsay, I told you to _open this door!_" There was a louder bang, and while the iced door had become solid enough to break a bone if someone kicked it hard enough, they kept hearing the bangs.

"Jack, I think it's time to go." Jamie whispered, looking to the window. He nodded, walking towards the opening, when for a moment, they all saw the lights throughout the whole town flicker again, and they stopped, looking around. The banging stopped for a moment, at least until the lights went back out. From the other side, they could hear a sinister laugh coming from the woman. Suddenly, they heard loud gunshots, as if from a shotgun. They could hear the ice cracking.

"Jack!" Jamie shouted, getting the spirit's attention. Jack ran over to them, grabbed Lindsay's hand and Jamie's arm, and flew out the window to the street below. At that moment, all the lights turned back on, and the three tensed for a moment, expecting them to turn back off. What they didn't expect was for the entire street to erupt in screams, wails, and other blood-curdling, unsavory sounds.

"What just happened?" Jamie breathed, looking around in confusion and a sort of fear as Lindsay held his leg tightly.

"I...don't know." Jack admitted. A dim glow caught his eye, and he looked to the north to see colorful green lights caressing the sky. The Aurora Borealis. The beckon to the Guardians. "But I have a feeling that I might just find out." He muttered, turning to the two. "Jamie, stay here with Lindsay. If you need anything, go to my lake." He said. "I'm going to the Pole." He said, lifting off and calling for the wind to take him to Nicholas St North and the other Guardians.

**-RotG-**

**Hi. I'm a person.**

**First chapter. Could be worse, could be better. I think I did pretty okay.**

**Okay, alright. I've seen a lot of Rise of the Guardian fanfiction dealing with new threats, but they always seem to involve Pitch directly as the big baddie. Also, they tend to show more of Jack being angsty, or Jack being severely tempted by evil things. Of course, I'm just saying that's most of them, not all.**

**This is my attempt at something a little different. Forgive me if the first chapter is a bit iffy. It's been some time since I wrote multi-chapter fanfiction and I just want to see people's reaction to this before I start to type up any more. I already have the second and third chapter done, though, so they should be up soon.**

**Feedback would be appreciated!**

**ZKL~**


	2. Chapter 2: Mindscrew

**Before you read the chapter, please know this: This is not my favorite chapter. I wasn't lying when I said previously that I had it written out, and unfortunately, I felt the need to rewrite it twice, causing a bit of a delay is my uploading of this.**

**Speaking of which...sorry about that. It's probably not the best idea to start writing multi-chapter fanfiction during the month you have finals. I'm just proud I was able to flesh out a decent chapter.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own RotG**

**xxx**

Jack reached Santoff Claussen in record time, and landed gracefully in the globe room, fully expecting the other Guardians to be there, ready to explain what the heck was going on. Unfortunately, all he got was an eerie silence.

See, usually, the Pole was full of noise. The yetis never stopped working, and even then their one day off was the night after Christmas. So hearing silence throughout the whole of the building was unnerving. Jack's eyes scanned the room, his whole body on high alert. The Globe, with all the lights, was still spinning slowly, and every light on there shined as bright as the stars at night.

There was no sign of any scuffle, everything seemed to be intact. He didn't feel any sort of dark presence or evil anywhere. For all intents and purposes, nothing had happened, and everything was fine.

Something was wrong, so wrong. He couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, and after two minutes of nothing happening, he began to move around, though cautiously.

Swiftly jumping off the ledge of the railing, Jack dropped down several stories before swinging down to the floor where North's office was. With tentative steps, Jack walked slowly, a tight grip on his staff and paranoia at every creak that sounded. Carefully, he pushed open the door leading into North's office, where he built ice sculpture toys.

Everything seemed perfectly normal, at least until a huge shadow passed the window. Jack gaped as the darkness blacked out the light completely, and he held his staff out. He could only watch as it covered the window. From his peripheral vision, he could see that the shadow was covering the entire workshop. Soon the only source of light was from the hole up above. It didn't help, only serving to cast an eerie lighting in the circular building.

Jack didn't ease up, he only spun to look up and around. It wasn't the Boogeyman - well, could have been, but he knew Pitch was a bit more forward when it came to intentions. Not to mention Pitch's darkness wasn't the weird smoke stuff. Pitch dealt with shadows and the things you see out of the corner of your eye.

"Let's have some fun." The high-pitched, monotone voice came from right over his shoulder. Jack tensed and spun, shooting a blast of ice behind him, only hitting thin air. Heart beating, the spirit spun around, looking for any sign of the owner of the voice. No matter which way he turned, however, he couldn't see anything.

"Who's there!" He shouted, gripping his staff tightly and ready to attack. A loud ringing started to echo throughout the entire room, and Jack winced as it began to intensify.

"It'll be a game." The voice said again, in the same high-pitched, quiet tone as before, right above his shoulder. This time, however, when he looked behind him, he got a feeling of where to look next, and tilted his head up, only to be inches away from a marble white face mask. With a yelp, Jack stumbled backwards, tripping and falling. However, he did manage to send a huge blast of sleet at the thing.

As the ice raced toward it, it just vanished into thin air, dissipating into nothing more than a wisp of smoke. Jack could hear the sound of giggling, soon accompanied by the sounds of skittering feet - the same sounds of running rats on hard floor. A chill touched his spine, and he hear the giggling directly behind him. Twisting, he shot a blast from his staff into empty darkness. Now that he thought about it, the whole workshop had gotten increasingly darker when the voice started talking.

"Show yourself!" Jack shouted, growling at the air. Silence followed, and all he could hear was the echo of his voice. The skittering feet started again, and it rushed right at him. The immortal teen spun around to face it, but at that moment the skittering stopped and the giggling started again, except this time it came from all around him. Huffing angrily, Jack raised his staff and slammed it down on the wood floor, releasing a huge gust of wind and frost. As that happened, the small light from above reflected off the frost, and under that glow, Jack could see what had been surrounding him.

What he didn't expect was for hundreds of corpses to be standing in a perfect circle around him, white eyes, pale skin, and blue lips. Every one of them was looking straight at Jack, devoid of any expression. And behind them all, standing a bit taller in the back but still distinguishable, was the masked figure from before.

"What in the..." He gasped, tensing.

"'Let's have some fun', he said. 'It'll be a game', he said." Jack's eyes fixated on the mask, the apparent source of the disembodied voice despite the fact that its mouth wasn't moving. "You never really thought about consequences, did you?" The images of the corpses flickered, and within that second they moved about five feet closer to him.

"W-what?" Jack stuttered, losing his stance and stumbling back. "What's going on?!"

"How can you have fun when your fun killed us?" Jack tensed when the corpses began to talk. It was a rattling, raspy chorus of voices, and Jack had to suppress a shudder. Then they started moving, reaching out white, decaying hands and grabbing for Jack. The spirit jumped up, hovering above the corpses, but that didn't stop them from trying to get a hold of him. "Tell us!" He flew higher, going towards the one source of light.

"You bring death everywhere you go." Jack felt his heart in his throat as he began to reach the top - but his movements began to feel hindered, like he was in water. As if that were the case, he could feel himself stop breathing. Things grabbed his feet, solid and cold as stone, and he looked down to see the white eyes of the corpses. They had reached him and were pulling him down. He closed his eyes tightly, not wanting to watch as the one hope he had left became distanced from him.

"Jack!"

Jack gasped for air and snapped his eyes open to see Toothiana over his face. He was laying down, back on the floor, disoriented and with a huge headache coming on.

"T-Tooth? What was...what was that?!" He exclaimed, looking around wildly, eyes wide. He was in the workshop, on the platform next to the Globe, and everything seemed normal. The area was full of the sound of the yetis working, and this time, the only source of light wasn't in the ceiling.

"Calm down, Jack, you're safe." A thick Russian accent cut through his thoughts.

But - what happened?" Jack asked again, grabbing his staff - which was a few feet away from him - before rising from the floor and looking around.

"Trust me, Snowflake. We want to know too." Bunny said, crossing his arms. "We all passed out - some of the yetis just said that we were all standing one moment, the next we were all on the ground, unconscious." Jack looked up at the hole in the ceiling.

"What about me, I flew in here..." Jack trailed off, looking at Sandy, who started 'speaking'. "I crashed? How does...how did - how? How can an actual thing do this? The only one I can think of is-"

"Pitch." Tooth finished, wringing her hands. North let out a nervous laugh.

"Pitch? It can't be him, he made himself a neutral party a decade ago!" The man boomed.

"Who else could it be?" Bunny cut in, crossing his arms with a scowl. Everyone turned silent, thoughts racing.

"Well..." Everyone turned to Jack. "When I was in...whatever that was..." Sandy made a quick image above his head. "Hallucination? Okay, hallucination...it did not feel like Pitch. Pitch controls fear, this thing was bringing up my past - some of the worse things I've done. I've seen Pitch play on fear, but that's not guilt." There was another moment of silence.

"He could've gotten stronger. Like when he was able to use the Nightmare Sand." Bunny suggested. North shook his head.

"In a decade?" He scoffed. "Even I could not gain an immense amount of power in a decade against people who've already beaten me." He sighed. "Besides...I have a feeling that whatever attacked us was the cause of what I called all of you here for." North informed them, crossing his arms.

"What're you talking about?" Bunny asked.

"About two hours ago, every town in the northern area of North America was completely blacked out. Thirty minutes later, they turn back on. However, suddenly, there are reports of hundreds of people going to the hospital, about one hundred dead, and more arrested." The other four Guardians looked at each other.

"How did you know that it was something that the Guardians needed to take care of?" Tooth asked, watching the screen keenly.

"And don't say you felt it in your belly, mate." Bunnymund warned. Jack, however, stepped forward.

"Actually...he may be right." The four older Guardians turned to him. "I was just outside a town when it blacked out. I went in to check it out, heard a kid scream, and she was holed up in her room, hiding from her mother." He explained, leaning on his staff. "I found out why - the mother was acting like she was possessed. She was trying to break down the door, even when I iced it over. I got the girl out, and the lights came back on. Then I heard everyone screaming. That's when I saw the Aurora Borealis." Jack finished, huffing out a sigh.

"Think it might be a good idea to talk to Pitch about this?" Tooth asked, looking at the other men.

"It might also be good to check out some of the towns. Especially if Frostbite left that poor sheila all by herself." Bunny added. Jack crossed his arms, scowling.

"I left her with Jamie, thank you very much. He was with me when it all happened." He explained. There was an awkward pause before North spoke.

"Alright, who's going where?" He asked, clapping his hands together. Sandy raised his hand, a picture of a cluster of houses above his head.

"I'll go with Sandy to check out the towns." Bunny offered.

"Jack and I will speak with Pitch." Tooth said.

"To the sleigh, then! Tooth, Jack, we will meet up at Pole after?" The two nodded and flew out of the workshop just as Bunny began to argue with North over whether they were going to use the tunnels or the sleigh.

**xxx**

**Alright, there you go. Again, Pitch is not the villain in this story - however, as I never said that he wouldn't know something about the actual villain. The villain is not a mythological being, it's more of something I thought of that's been comprised of multiple headcanons and several lines said by the characters in the movie.**

**Please tell me what you think, thanks to the FFnet updates being nicer than the YouTube and Tumblr ones, it's easier to review, and I would greatly appreciate you doing so.**

**Have a good week!**

**ZKL~**


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